Victoria takes step to remove Macdonald statue as part of reconciliation process

The statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, will be removed from outside Victoria city hall as soon as Saturday, said Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps.

She said the city does not propose erasing history, but rather taking time to tell that chapter of Canadian history in a thoughtful way.

The statue will be stored until a more contextual way to display it is worked out.

Helps says the recommendation to remove the monument to one of Canada’s Fathers of Confederation is part of the city’s reconciliation process with First Nations.

In an online statement, Helps calls Macdonald a “key architect of the Indian residential school system.”

“We will remove the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from the front doors of city hall so that the family members and other Indigenous people do not need to walk past this painful reminder of colonial violence each time they enter the doors of their municipal government,” she said.

In a 1883 speech in the House of Commons, Macdonald referred to First Nations people as “savages” and advocated withdrawing First Nations children from their parental influence.

“When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of

When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian.

thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly impressed upon myself, as head of the department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men,” Macdonald told MPs.

If the recommendation is approved by city council on Thursday, Macdonald’s statue will be removed on Saturday.

In its place, the city will install a plaque that details the city’s path of reconciliation with the Lekwungen peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations that led to the removal of the statue.

“I am ashamed to say that I have an undergraduate degree in Canadian history, a master’s in Canadian history and a half-completed PhD in Canadian history. It is not until we began this witness reconciliation program that I learned about the role that Canada’s first prime minister played in developing residential schools, the effects of which are well-known to be still felt today both by school attendees and their children and grandchildren,” Helps says.

Helps says a cleansing, blessing and healing ceremony will later be held in the space where the statue formerly stood.

She said eventually a piece of art representative of the Lekwungen culture will likely go in the space.